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Controller Upgrade

A project log for Delta 3D Printer

A custom scratch built delta printer of my own design.

jasonJason 03/31/2017 at 12:280 Comments

It was a few months after I started printing that I was really getting the slicer settings dialled in. I had learned so much about how each parameter affects others. This meant that I could start pushing the speeds up to get faster prints. I started to notice that there were tiny little “bullets” appearing on the surface of my prints. At first, I thought they were where a layer change was occurring but it turns out the printer was pausing for the tiniest moment.

Ocarina with bullets

Ocarina with bullets

After a bit of research and experimenting with the Marlin configuration file, I realised that the Arduino MEGA couldn’t keep up with the high speeds. There were a few options to reduce the computational load but none of them had a huge effect. I was also interested in auto leveling (tramming) which Marlin didn’t support well for delta printers at the time (Late 2014).

Mid 2016, after getting back from a year abroad, I started researching 32-bit ARM-based boards. There were a few on the market that were quite mature. One that stood out the most was the Smoothieboard. It had all of the features that I needed and I’d read some great reviews of the Smoothieware firmware to go with it. Unfortunately, the Smoothieboard was way out of my budget. It was then that I discovered a few other boards that were listed as “Smoothieware compatible”. I did some more research before settling on the MKS SBASE. It’s a Smoothieware compatible clone from Shenzhen that costs around USD$50 - about five times cheaper. There is quite a bit of negative feedback on supporting the SBASE as the manufacturer won’t open-source their design, effectively ripping off the open-source community. I still feel pretty guilty about the purchase.

The transplant went fairly straightforward. I printed a custom bracket to hold a nice big quiet fan for cooling. I also added some plastic spiral wrap to neaten up the wiring.

Just fits

Just fits

It was immediately noticeable just how smooth the new board and firmware was. I never saw the bullets again.

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